You encode the image once, but transmit it many, many times, in general. It it send from phone to iCloud, then from iCloud to your other apple device and so and

You encode the image once, but transmit it many, many times, in general. It it send from phone to iCloud, then from iCloud to your other apple device and so and so on. God forbid you share it with someone. Then iCloud has internal resiliencies and redundancies, etc. etc. Short point: I do think it’s environmentally better (or less worse). it’s a drop in the ocean though.